The Internet is an awesome tool for scientific collaboration. Theorists have rare talents — they are not just warm bodies that get thrown at really tough problems. As a consequence, the scientific community has always been international, because the people who need to work together to solve a problem might all come from different countries. Historically, it has been tough for people to find like minds, especially when working on problems out in front of the existing structure. This is what the Internet promises to fix. Somebody can post something, and then somebody on the other side of the world can find out about it, and the two, who never would have met otherwise, can collaborate.
But that's just the beginning. We are on the threshold of a new age, in which scientific advances will not be done by one or a couple of people, showcasing how much information they could assemble. Rather, works will be the products of ongoing collaboration among hundreds or even thousands of people contributing insights and information far beyond the capabilities of any individual or small team.
For an excellent example of how much value can be generated by online collaboration, we have only to look at what has been done on Wikipedia. With a relatively small effort by a large number of people over a long period of time, the world's largest and most up-to-date encyclopedia has been created. The idea of
crowdsourcing has arrived.
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